Achmat with his daughter Justine, undated. Private Collection Justine Dangor

In the early 1980s Achmat was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer affecting the lymphatic system. Initially, he was treated at a South African hospital designated for coloured and Indian patients. The conditions were dire and the treatment did more harm than good. A staff member injected into Achmat’s tissue instead of a vein and a surgical procedure caused more damage. He was very ill. Revlon, where Achmat still worked, arranged for him to receive treatment in London where he lived for about six months, sometime between 1981 and 1983 (dates vary).

In London, Achmat spent time with his friend anti-apartheid activist Ismail Coovadia who was in exile and was based at the London office of the African National Congress (ANC). Achmat’s family recalled that Achmat also met Oliver Tambo, then president of the ANC, and deepened his relationship with the ANC. Achmat’s political ideas shifted to ‘non-racialism’. However, he still valued some of the core principles of Black Consciousness. As he explained: “the principle of nonracialism in the national democratic movement is linked to the concept of African leadership and empowerment …I still believe that the values of black self-assertion and emancipation put forward by Black Consciousness are relevant to me today if they do not preclude upholding a non-racial political philosophy”.

Achmat said of living in London: “I saw a different world. For the first time I lived in the open freely. I had to go for treatment every second day and wrote for about 12 hours per day. I couldn’t stop writing.” He considered emigrating but it became clear to him that by “both default and design” he couldn’t remain in the UK: “I came back for practical and emotional reasons. The British government wouldn’t have given me asylum as I was in London for economic rather than political reasons. And the politics of South Africa were starting to change — there was a different dynamic.”

Achmat’s first book Waiting for Leila was published in 1981. Two years later came Bulldozer, his first collection of poetry. In 1982, Voices from Within: Black Poetry from Southern Africa introduced and edited by Michael Chapman and Achmat was released. Achmat’s work was also published in literary magazines Wietie (launched in 1980) and Staffrider. By this time, he had moved to Riverlea, west of Johannesburg, with his family and in 1980 his third child Zain was born.

Riverlea, a low-cost housing development project for people classified as “coloured” set up in the 1960s, lay between two large mine dumps that were once part of the old Langlaagte Mine. A Black Sash survey presented in 1973, noted that it was “already developing into a slum” through no fault of its residents. “There was no less desirable or bleaker spot to erect a model township. Built below a mine dump the houses are practically set in a sand pit… A combination of outside elements and inferior construction is literally blowing these pitiful dwellings into the ground.”

A railway line marked the division between the low income south, Riverlea Extension and the slightly better off north. Achmat lived in the northern part. According to an article published in Arise! Vuka, newspaper of Action Youth, in 1984, many of the residents of Riverlea Extension had been forced to relocate there because of the Group Areas Act. They were allocated two-to-three-bedroom-houses without toilets, electricity and ceilings. Achmat’s friend and comrade the late Chris van Wyk recalled what it was like for him:

“In Riverlea, everyone was poor. I did not understand before I was six years old that it had to do with the colour of my skin and all we looked forward to was playing with our tops in the streets as well as ‘gezat-ing’: putting all your money together to buy a packet of chips and tablespoon of atchar to put inside a loaf of bread.”

Riverlea was the setting for Achmat’s third book The Z Town Trilogy (1990). Achmat explained: “Z-Town is an abbreviated reference to Riverlea, where I live, which is often scathingly referred to as Zombie Town. This is a reference to the lack of infrastructures such as lights and proper roads and basic facilities, which led people to suggest that the government placed the inhabitants there because it thought they were zombies.” Achmat’s sister Jessie also lived in Riverlea with her family. The two youngest Dangor brothers Abbas and Zane, now in their teens, lived with her. They joined young activists to fight the state’s educational policies through the school boycotts of 1980.

The Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and the Azanian Student’s Organisation (AZASO) were established in 1979 as national organisations. COSAS was widely supported in Riverlea and led by comrades such as Igantious ‘Nash’ Jacobs and Patrick Flusk. Patrick, Achmat’s comrade and friend, wrote that: “It was only in 1980 that we succeeded in drawing most of our students to boycott the Apartheid gutter education which spread to many schools in the coloured areas, joining our compatriots in the black townships.

Achmat was not convinced that school boycotts were the right way to oppose the state, although he was sympathetic as his sister Jessie explained at the memorial:

“In 1980 Zane will remember, we chose Achmat and Don (Mattera) to speak to the principals of schools because we were going to make the country ungovernable. Our generation is that generation that was called upon to make the country ungovernable and Achmat was very involved in the education sector. Uncle Don and Achmat were not that persuaded that what we were doing was the right thing, to bring the schools out, but they understood us and they also understood our passion – that generation and we did take the kids out of school and Zane was arrested for the first time and my mother freaked out, because we were now dragging her beautiful little boy into the fray of our madness.

Achmat’s youngest brothers Abbas and Zane were involved in the boycotts and were among the thousands of young people who joined the struggle, especially after the United Democratic Front (UDF) brought together a broad alliance of anti-apartheid organisations.

People across the country started to organise civic associations to challenge the everyday hardships that apartheid caused in their communities. The first to be launched, in September 1979 was the Soweto Civic Association. It came out of the earlier Committee of Ten. Other notable civics in this period included: the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (PEBCO); the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee (CAHAC), the Uitenhage Black Civic Organisation and Cradock Residents Association (CRADORA) in the Eastern Cape; and the Durban Housing Action Committee and Joint Rent Action Committee (JORAC) in Natal. Most of these were umbrella bodies, incorporating locally-based civics or residents’ associations. Some of these organisations would receive support from the Kagiso Trust with Achmat as the first executive director in 1986.

Achmat’s youngest brother Zane remembers his brother and sister being very active in the Riverlea Civic Association, established around 1983/1984. Arise Vuka! Newspaper of Action Youth reported in the 1984 Sep/Oct issue:

“The laws of this country are designed to oppress and exploit the majority of people at every turn. We must continue our struggle to eradicate all injustices that have been flung at us by actively organising ourselves into sports, community, youth organisations in our areas. Concerned residents in Riverlea Extension have come together and are presently engaged in organising a civic association in the area.”

By the 1980s there was a vibrant arts and culture community across the country. It offered training in the arts. Silk screening and linocuts were used to make political posters designed by artists’ collectives. Posters were mainly produced at: the Screen Training Project (STP) in Johannesburg; the Community Arts Project in Cape Town; Katlehong Arts Centre (south-east of Johannesburg); the Alexandra Arts Centre (Johannesburg); the Funda Arts Centre (Soweto); the Community Arts Workshop (Durban); the Mofolo Art Centre (Soweto); and the Medu Art Ensemble, based in Botswana. Most of the Medu Ensemble were exiled South African artists and included Achmat’s comrades Mandla Langa and Mongane Wally Serote. Medu also organised training programmes, workshops and conferences. It was the main organiser of the pivotal “Culture and Resistance Symposium” held in Gaborone, Botswana in July 1982.

Several writers’ groups were also established, including the non-racial Writers’ and Artists’ Guild of South Africa in 1974 and, in 1978 PEN. Staffrider reported in July-August 1979:

“Recently a ‘writers’ wagon’ (two Kombis in fact) visited writers in the Cape. In the wagon there were representatives from various groups, Mpumalanga Arts Group (Hammersdale), Malopoets (Mariannridge), Zamani Arts Association (Dobsonville), Creative Youth Association (Diepkloof), Khauleza Creative Society (Alexandra), Madi Arts Group (Katlehong) and many more individual writers. The trip was made possible by the kind assistance of the British and Dutch people, through their local embassies. Soon another ‘writers’ wagon’ will visit groups and writers in the North. All writers are invited to travel with PEN.

PEN’s membership was diverse but there were disagreements over who could be members. Should membership be restricted to published writers or could journalists be invited? There were also debates over the kind of workshops it would organise. Achmat’s colleague Njabulo Ndebele recalled that many black writers “began to find it problematic to be in the same organisation with white people. Under pressure, PEN… was forced to disband early in 1982” and the African Writers’ Association “became the home of those black writers who were dissatisfied with the white membership of PEN…” It attempted to build on the cultural experience of the township groups and also established Skotaville publishers.

In an attempt to offer a space to writers who could not easily find a home in existing groups, the Writers’ Forum appeared in 1982, but was not intended to be a formal organisation. Achmat stressed it was “to be exactly what the word ‘Forum’ intimates: a place for public discussion, without restriction or fear of offending another’s political probity.” Over the next two years the Writers’ Forum convened many meetings and workshops. Key discussions centred on the role of the writer, one of the issues that received a lot of attention at the “Culture and Resistance” Symposium in Gaborone. The Writer’s Forum was only formally established in 1984 and launched in July 1985.

The “Culture and Resistance Symposium” organised by exiled artists living in Botswana was hosted by the National Museum and Art Gallery of Botswana from 5-9 July 1982. Among the delegates were Ravan Press, the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA formed in 1978); the Community Arts Project (CAP established in 1977) in Cape Town; the Open School (formed in 1972) in Johannesburg and Afrapix (established in 1982). Achmat was likely involved in the arrangements and possibly attended the symposium. There is no surviving list of attendees in the archives.

The Symposium included a cultural conference, an art exhibition titled “Art for Social Development” curated by David Koloane and Emile Maurice and a photographic exhibition curated by Paul Weinberg in his capacity as a member of Afrapix, as well as performative art.

The theme emerged from a growing concern among practitioners about what the role of art and artists should be in the context of apartheid and the struggle against it.

It was at this symposium that the idea of “people’s culture” was first publicly adopted. The symposium took a stand against the idea of the lone artist and called on ‘cultural workers’ to “commit themselves to the oppressed communities, and to explore the expressions, realities and demands of grassroots South African society.” The dominant idea was that art should be a weapon in the fight against apartheid and some organisations were formed with this goal in mind, for example, the Vakalisa Art Association.

The ideas also made an impact on the exiled ANC, which set up a Department of Arts and Culture in 1982. A secretariat, led by Barbara Masekela was only appointed in 1984. The next year, Rixaka: The Cultural Journal of the African National Congress (later subtitled a’ Journal of Cultural Workers’) was launched.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Netherlands hosted a solidarity conference with the Botswana Symposium, at the end of 1982. Called “The Cultural Voice of Resistance, South African and Dutch Artists against Apartheid”, it took place in Amsterdam from 13 – 18 December. Maarten Rens, Louk Vreeswijk and other members of the video collective of the AABN (Anti-Apartheid Movement Netherlands) produced a video. It includes clips with: Cosmo Pieterse, Barbara Masekela, Hugh Masekela and a group of South African jazz musicians, James Phillips and seven Dutch choirs, and Fons Geerlings (AABN) click below to watch.

Meanwhile, in the face of growing resistance, the apartheid government was strategising to ensure its survival and proposed a constitutional amendment in the hope of building alliances with ‘non-white’ groups. In May 1983, it announced that a ‘Tricameral Parliament’ would be created to allow Coloured and Asian South Africans “nominal representation”. There would be three racially separate chambers of parliament for whites, coloureds and ‘Asians’. Real power would continue, however to rest in white hands through the presidency. There would be no parliamentary representation at all for African people. The Labour Party had indicated that, although it rejected the racial premises of the government’s proposals, it would be prepared to represent Coloureds in the new Parliament. The South African Indian Council (SAIC – a body connected to the national government office that managed segregated ‘Indian affairs’) had also decided to support the government’s proposals provided Indian communities approved them in a referendum. In the face of this compliance with the government’s plan, a new kind of resistance began to take shape. At the annual congress of the Transvaal Anti-SAIC Committee held in Johannesburg 23 January 1983, it had been decided to revive the old Transvaal Indian Congress as well as to establish a united democratic front. This new organisation would mobilise and co-ordinate mass campaigns against local government structures in African urban areas called Black Local Authorities created by the apartheid government through an Act of 1982, as well as the Tricameral parliament. Dr Allan Boesak, then president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, said:

“We cannot accept a ‘new deal’ which makes apartheid work even better. We cannot accept a future for our people when we had no say in it. And we cannot accept a ‘solution’ which says yes to homelands, the Group Areas Act, to laws which make us believe that we are separate and unequal.”

Over the next seven months regional committees that forged relationships with local organisations were established. Achmat recalled being unable to attend one of the early meetings, but helping out nevertheless:

“I was being [monitored and] I took one of the activists, a man from the Eastern Cape … And this was in the car that Revlon gave us, the company car. And I drove him to this venue near Roodepoort, dropped him off. The next day I get called into the office, there’s a security policeman there telling my manager that I’m using the car for illegal activities. And I said, ‘I gave a lift to someone, that’s all I did.’”

Within months, over 600 community, student, trade union, women’s and church organisations had joined the ‘mass democratic movement’, although as Patrick Flusk recalled, it was not easy:

“it was difficult to organise in coloured areas due to the low political education and lack of progressive formations, we needed to find creative and innovative ways to organise. We therefore, established resource centres, day care centres, church youth structures, civic, teachers and women formations. The establishment of Advice and Resource Centres was done with the intention of mobilising people into the mass democratic movement, under the banner of the UDF and lead by the ANC.”

Achmat who did attend some of these organisational meetings, did not tolerate people talking over each other. Patrick remembers:

“At one of the UDF meetings, where people were talking past each other, not listening to each other and they wanted their own way, Achmat Dangor took off his shoe … I think it was around 1985, somewhere there and I think the meeting was in Fordsburg, and he took off his shoe and he slammed it on the table and saying, ‘You will listen to me. I will make my point.’”

Homes of community leaders became organisational bases:

“During all this time, we used Chris van Wyk’s mother’s house as a place where we could organise activities from. So, the Youth, the Women’s Group, the Civic, even the Anti-PC was formed there. Jessie Duarte’s house as well Achmat Dangor’s house. Those houses, we called them ANC bases … there was a siege within black townships and so black activists couldn’t quite operate, but there was a little bit of space in coloured townships, so we started planning and mobilizing all the activities from within coloured townships, because there was a little bit of space that we could move and operate from there.”

Riverlea activists, with the support of the Open School where Partick later worked, and the Writers’ Forum, started a community pamphlet called Raakwys (Get Wise).

Regional representatives formed an Interim National Committee. Also included, amongst others were: Albertina Sisulu; Mewa Ramgobin; and Steve Tshwete. The committee decided to launch the UDF nationally on 20 August 1983. It chose the date because that was when the government planned to introduce the Tricameral parliament. Four hundred thousand letters, flyers and brochures to advertise the national launch were circulated. Over 475 organisations came together in Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town for the launch. Albertina Sisulu was elected president in absentia.

UDF aligned organisations provided a way of working with the ANC’s internal underground structures and establishing contacts with the ANC in exile. South African History Archive stresses that these contacts were illegal. A five-year jail sentence for anyone found guilty of “furthering the aims of a banned organisation” such as the ANC was in force. Activists like Achmat were closely monitored. Working at Revlon had its advantages, however since Achmat explained “the security police would not dream of raiding Revlon’s offices for political documents.”

His private and home life was scrutinised. Achmat recounted:

“My [personal] bank account, they [police] focused on it, it’s almost like they checked on my banking details all the time: What did I do with the money? Who did I spend it on? Who did I give it to? As if to prove that I was giving money to subversive organisations or illegal activity, which wasn’t true.”

The family’s home in Riverlea was raided and kept under surveillance. His family was harassed constantly:

“[My children] got used to raids at the house. Surveillance was unbelievable and they were always aware that there were people around the house. They couldn’t really bring their friends to our house. My daughter particularly. My son was much younger.”

The UDF and its affiliates promoted rent boycotts, school protests and worker stay-aways. Massive campaigns against the Tricameral elections were launched across the country, spearheaded by organisations most of which were affiliated to the UDF.

In Riverlea, the Anti-President’s Council (Anti-PC), of which Jessie, Achmat and Patrick were key members, worked closely with the Transvaal Anti-President’s Council (PC) Committee led by Professor Ismail Jacob (Josef) Mohamed. He was also the national president of the Anti-PC and vice president of the Transvaal region of the UDF. Cultural workers protested the Tricameral parliament through poetry and performance and the launching of Community Awareness theatre hosted by the Open School. Don Mattera was commissioned to write a play, which became One Time Brother.

On the eve of the Tricameral elections, the South African Police, empowered by the extremely broad powers given to them by the Internal Security Act, made hundreds of arrests. However, the boycott of the tricameral elections was successful. Fewer than 10 per cent of eligible Indians and coloureds cast a vote.

Image of Igshaan Dangor on Paliament’s website commemorating his life. Igshaan passed on 4 October 2020 from COVID almost a month after Achmat’s passing. Parilaiment

In 1984 the exiled President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo delivered his annual January 8^th Statement from Lusaka, Zambia. He called on ANC’s supporters to use their “accumulated strength to destroy the organs of government of the apartheid regime … To march forward must mean that we advance against the regime’s organs of state-power, creating conditions in which the country becomes increasingly ungovernable.” Thousands heeded Tambo’s call and participated in organised protests, demonstrations, strikes and boycotts. Others secretly left the country to join the armed wing of the ANC – uMkhonto we Size. Among them was Achmat’s younger brother Igshaan who left in 1984, returning only in 1990.

Tambo repeated the call to “make South Africa ungovernable”. It was broadcast on Radio Freedom, on 10 October 1984, 8 January 1985, and 22 July 1985 and became a key slogan of the anti-apartheid movement. In his call, Tambo specifically mentioned ‘cultural workers’:

“The cultural workers – artists, writers, musicians, poets, sportsmen and sportswomen – have the capacity to enrich the overall effort of our people in our quest for national liberation.

We charge our cultural workers with the task of using their craft to give voice, not only to the grievances, but also to the profoundest aspirations of the oppressed and exploited. In our country a new social and political order is being born. Our artists have to play an even bigger role as midwives of this glorious future. Let the arts be one of the many means by which we cultivate the spirit of revolt among the broad masses, enhance the striking power of our movement and inspire the millions of our people to fight for the South Africa we envisage.”

Cultural workers continued to produce posters and support mass protests across the country such as the 1985 consumer boycotts, primarily led by the UDF. Desmond Tutu and Beyers Naudé who addressed UDF meetings were also founding members and trustees of Kagiso Trust, which Achmat led from 1986.

It was an unprecedented period of resistance and revolt for which the state held the UDF largely responsible. On the 19 February 1985 Prof Mohammed, Albertina Sisulu, Frank Chikane, Cassim Saloojee, Sisa Njikelana and Thozamile Gqweta were arrested. They were taken to Durban where they joined eight others from different political parties and in December 1985 they were charged with high treason.

Protests were convened in different areas by the Natal Indian Congress; the Transvaal Indian Congress and the Anti-PC. Speak: the voice of the community, published by the Speak Community Newspaper Project, reported on the meetings quoting Achmat blaming collaborators with the Tricameral Parliament for what had happened: “The Hendrickses and Rajbansis are now as much to blame for the arrests, said Anti-PC member, Achmat Dangor.”

In July 1985 the Writer’s Forum was officially launched by founding members including Achmat and other writers such as Don Mattera, Nadine Gordimer and Chris van Wyk as well as Colin “Jiggs” Smuts and Dauphine Smuts of the Open School. The African Writers’ Association did not participate. Hein Willemse, then part of Vakalisa (formed in 1984) travelled from Cape Town to attend and wrote about running out of petrol on the way and later staying the night at the Dangors:

“It was at the inaugural meeting of the Writers’ Forum in the mid-1980s that Achmat and I met. He, and the organisers of the Writers’ Forum, including van Wyk, Colin “Jiggs” Smuts and Dauphine Smuts of the Johannesburg Open School, reached out to Vakalisa, a group of Cape Town writers and artists and invited us to the meeting. We drove through the night in a rented combi without a proper functioning petrol gauge. Somehow, we misjudged its capacity and along the N1 north in the early morning ran out of petrol, with Johannesburg still many hours away. We only arrived by late afternoon when most of the attendees—the writers, the activists and their hangers-on—already had their fill of what we believed was a scrumptious lunch, followed by afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches. Only the organisers and a conscientious few stayed on, courteously listening to our hastily rescheduled Vakalisa presentations. That evening, I stayed over at the Dangors’ house in Riverlea, the first of several subsequent enjoyable stay overs.”

Achmat explained that it was through discussions in the Writers’ Forum that the idea of ‘cultural workers’ and their responsibilities to the movement took shape:

“What emerged from those many consultations and conferences was a definition of writers as cultural workers. And the first Writers’ Forum defined cultural workers as an integral force in the struggle of the oppressed people. Writers, cultural workers, did have special skills but all those skills should be used to serve the community. Many people saw this as an attempt to impose a social and political order on writers and their creativity. But that was not true … The important point was that writers take responsibility for being located within the progressive movement, not as distanced commentators on the struggle.”

These principles stayed in place after the Writer’s Forum morphed into the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW) in 1987.

The government responded to the development of the mass movement with increasing repression. On 20 July 1985, the first of two states of emergency was introduced. It gave the police and the army unlimited power to detain people and to ban meetings and organisations. Seven hundred South African Defence Force troops were sent into the townships. President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, executive member of the South African Council of Churches and soon to be a trustee of Kagiso Trust, Allan Boesak described it as “a reign of terror”. “In the last few months (of 1985)” Boesak reported “more than 10 000 people have been detained without trial; of those, some have been released, some have been charged with treason, while others have simply disappeared. We do not know what has happened to those who have disappeared. A pattern is emerging, however, that has persuaded us that what we are seeing is a systematic assassination of the middle level of leadership, not only of the United Democratic Front, but of other organisations as well.”

In August 1985, the European Community and Commonwealth (ECC later European Community) convened a meeting to formulate a response to South Africa’s declaration of a state of emergency. Subsequently, EC foreign ministers met leaders from the UDF and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) in Luxembourg. The setting up of a civic trust was proposed and the European Special Programme for the Victims of Apartheid was designed. With the intensification of the international disinvestment campaign, multinational companies started to pull out of South Africa. Shortly after Achmat’s entry into the world of development activism, when he was appointed as the first executive director of Kagiso Trust, Revlon left the country.

Despite the state of emergency, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) formed in December 1985.  Cultural activities also assumed a new role, creating a platform for people to come together “to witness their strength and celebrate their commitment.” Achmat recalled:

“The development of these organisations [UDF and COSATU] demonstrated that the oppressed people were no longer merely lamenting their situation. They were actually giving organizational form to their resistance, and working out how to resolve their problems by actively providing solutions, providing new models for the future. And it introduced a whole kind of different thinking among writers.”